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The study discusses a relationship between Gadamer's reading of Platonic edios and his own thought, particularly the question of Gadamer's reading of of Platonic eidos. Gadamer publication 'Truth and Method' suggests the Platonic dialectic as a model and expresses the dialogical, open-ended side of Plato. In the Gadamer sense, the eidos is not so much an answer waiting to be discovered, but a way to ask a question.

This essay begins from Vattimo's and Zabala's account of hermeneutic communism as an antifoundationalist mode of thought that promotes a state of "emergency" by undermining those established truths that promote only the interests of history's winners. The essay takes up the crisis of public discourse concerning climate change, arguing that Gadamer's thought indicates, first, how hermeneutics can respond to the objection that it is too relativistic to contribute to discussions concerning climate change, and second, that there are hermeneutic virtues whose exercise could improve the discussions of how to meet this serious challenge. These hermeneutic virtues and commitments are: letting language speak us, actively seeking to be proved wrong, respecting (earned) authority, being open in conversation with others, respecting others' freedom, and acknowledging one's limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the impact of Kierkegaard’s work on the thought of Stanley Cavell. Cavell identifies two central themes in Kierkegaard’s philosophy: first, rather than concerning itself with problems of logic or with abstract questions, philosophy is concerned with ordinary life and its lived spiritual questions; second, there are things that can only be understood by participating in them. Therefore, the task of the philosopher is not to explain or define ideas but to dramatize for the reader that the choice of one’s inward way of life is of vital importance. These two themes, along with Kierkegaard’s account of repetition, are fundamentally important in Cavell’s own work in the philosophy of film, specifically in what Cavell calls the “comedies of remarriage” and the “melodramas of the unknown woman.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the distinction between gift and market exchange which illuminates some basic and often unarticulated attitudes toward justice in family life. In "Justice, Gender, and the Family," Susan M. Okin has written an incisive critique of contemporary U.S. theories of distributive justice. She exposes the false gender neutrality of theorists who have discussed justice among human beings while ignoring the very different roles and expectations of women and men and who have assumed without acknowledgment the work of childbearing and child rearing performed by women. In "The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property," Lewis Hyde highlights the distinction between gift and market exchange. In both gift and market systems people exchange goods and services, but both objects and persons are viewed quite differently in the two systems. In a market exchange, someone offers a commodity for sale at a price, and someone else buys it. The terms are explicit by itself, the exchange creates no personal commitment or connection between the buyer and the seller. The ideals of gift exchange exemplified by the kula and other historical gift systems are equally found in contemporary Western etiquette surrounding the giving of presents.